Word: orbiteer
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...this crucial backing, the space agency was compelled to change the shuttle's design, vastly complicating the job of building it. The Air Force insisted that the payload capacity be expanded to 65,000 lbs. (the better to carry big spy satellites). NASA also had to extend the orbiter's "cross range" so that it could glide a full 1,200 miles either to the right or left of its original orbital trajectory after re-entering the atmosphere. That would enable a Florida-launched shuttle, which travels about 1,000 miles south of Vandenberg on its first circuit...
...Pentagon hopes to replace the Titan, Titan-Centaur and Atlas-Centaur boosters that have long been used to hurl military payloads like the Big Bird spy satellite into orbit. Such rockets are strictly one-shot throwaways, costly to use (up to $75 million a launch) and not entirely foolproof (5% of the launches have failed). For the military, the shuttle is a reliable new lift vehicle that can be employed again and again to put hardware into orbit. But it is much more than that. The Air Force has long dreamed of a permanent, manned orbital platform that could...
...payloads by shuttle. Air Force planners are thinking of buying one or two shuttles for their exclusive use. They are also developing a new portable booster to be carried aboard, thus overcoming one of the shuttle's notable limitations. It can operate only in low earth orbit (at altitudes from 115 to 690 miles). But the new booster rocket, attached to satellites to be carried into space, will be able to hurl them into geosynchronous or stationary orbits at an altitude of 22,300 miles. In such orbits, a surveillance satellite's speed almost exactly matches the earth...
...once proud bridges to the leaking sewers beneath its streets, America is structurally unsound. Highways are crumbling. Avenues are cracking. Trains jump their worn-out tracks. Coal ships languish outside overburdened ports. While the U. S. has the technological prowess to blast a magnificent space shuttle into orbit and land it gently back on earth, it has failed to care properly for its most important public works...
...funk, the Eicher approach evolved from early infatuations with Coleman, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Talking about jazz, he still sounds like a booster for the home team. "As much as I like and appreciate the African spontaneity that propels so much jazz, I feel that the Western orbit has a specific quality to add. Complex polyphonies. Extended silences. The value of the contemplative...